The anonymous activist known as “the Freeway Blogger” is blitzing Bay Area freeways this weekend with 150 hand-painted antiwar signs, a spree marking the 1,500th U.S. death in Iraq. He has posted more than 2,500 such signs along California’s roads in recent years.

He’s not aiming to block out the scenery or break your mind; he said he’s just doing what he believes a good patriot should.

“Anyone can do this,” he said Friday. “It’s not just our right. If you see your country is going in the wrong direction, it’s your responsibility to speak out.”

It’s also not quite legal, as state officials have insisted signs can be a safety hazard as a “visual distraction” to drivers. California Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. Wayne Ziese said Friday that if officers see the Freeway Blogger in action,”we’re going to take the appropriate enforcement action and arrest or cite, depending on the activities observed.

“You’re not allowed to post your message, whatever it may be, on freeway properties or state properties or someone else’s private properties without permission,” he said, adding Caltrans crews will remove the signs.

Hence, the Freeway Blogger’s anonymity. He said he’s a 43-year-old East Coast native who runs a charity and who moved recently from Orange County to Berkeley, “the home of free speech.

“The message I want people to get is, ‘You can do this too,'” he said. “I have the feeling people in the Bay Area are going to be a little more open to that than people in Southern California, where I was something of an anomaly, to say the least.”

He started his guerrilla crusade in mid-2002 “when the rumblings for war against Iraq began.” He said he was blown away by America’s ability to ignore Osama bin Laden and focus on overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“That is the most incredible thing that’s ever happened during my lifetime, even more than Sept. 11,” he said, adding America’s loss of international goodwill irked him, too. “My father’s professional life was making people from other countries visit and love America. … Since he passed away, maybe because he passed away, just seeing his work kind of (pitched) away is a big part of my motivation.

“It just became incumbent upon me to say something.”

And so, “Osama who?” signs were among his first. Other favorites have included “Nobody died when Clinton lied,” “Quagmire accomplished” and “Bush lied,” not to mention “Rumsfailed” and “Chimpeach.”

“The essence of it is reductionism: The shorter the message, the bigger you can make it and the less time it takes to paint,” he said.

“I personally don’t know if the war is a lie, but what I do know is that this message doesn’t come out in the mainstream media and isn’t a part of the average American’s informational diet. That’s the kind of thing I’m trying to correct with what I do, to balance the flow of information.”

Indeed, one person with some paint, some cardboard and a dream can share a message with hundreds of thousands of motorists per day — and the Freeway Blogger said some of his signs have remained in place for months.

He’s become something of an artiste along the way. He disdains painted bedsheets — they’re hard to read and fall too easily — instead, he uses an overhead projector to trace neat lettering onto cardboard for signs that are “utter disposable but very, very easy to read.”

The renegade signster said he’s been stopped by police a few times “and each time, it’s always been, ‘Look, you and your signs get out of here.’ Nobody wants to make a big deal about it, and that’s fine by me. It’s such a low-level crime, cops have other things to do.”

He said his Web site gets plenty of e-mail — some of it hate mail, but much of it voicing admiration for his courage. But the Freeway Blogger says it doesn’t really take so much courage.

“The more brains you use, the less (guts) you need,” he said, noting that by carefully choosing the times and places in which he posts, “I could do this for 100 years and not get caught.”